This will be interesting news to almost every general manager in Major League Baseball: Mitch Williams, who is paid for his baseball insight, apparently believes that one cannot be a general manager unless one played baseball. He writes this about the Nolan Ryan drama on his blog:

I don’t know [Jon] Daniels, but the way that Michael Young was treated there was just wrong. Young changed positions four times for the good of the team. He became an All-Star at three different positions, then demanded a trade after the signing of Adrian Beltre.

I spoke to Michael about this, and that conversation will remain between us. One thing I can say for sure is that as soon as a GM starts to think he can evaluate talent better than someone like Ryan without anywhere near the baseball background, he is giving himself too much credit.

…In my opinion, you are only ignorant if you try and tell someone how to do their job if you aren’t qualified to do that job. I don’t think I’m going to get to many people calling me to do their taxes or represent them in court. Just as I am not going to argue with someone who does a job that I have no clue about.

Well, Nolan Ryan was with the Rangers when all of that was going down, so unless Ryan was merely a figurehead then — which Williams apparently does not allow for in the premise to this rant — the Michael Young stuff was partly his doing too.

In other news, given Williams’ view that one cannot be as good at something as someone who has a greater background in that pursuit, can I, as a bona fide baseball blogger, tell Mitch Williams that he shouldn’t be blogging? Or does that stand whether or not the people saying so are baseball bloggers?